


A little bit of peril

by Deepdarkwaters



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: 1980s, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Friends to Lovers, Kissing, Loss of Virginity, M/M, Pining, Silly Spy Gadgets, Virginity Roleplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-02 03:28:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6548788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deepdarkwaters/pseuds/Deepdarkwaters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Pretend for me." The words come from nowhere, suddenly there in Merlin's mouth being spoken before he's even registered their presence in his brain. Harry makes a questioning little noise and Merlin soothes him with another kiss, a long slow press of his lips against Harry's thudding pulse. "Pretend there's been nobody else."</p><p>Harry swears low, shuddering over the fricative of the <i>fuck</i> and tilting his head back down to look at Merlin curiously. "You don't strike me as the jealous type."</p><p>"I'm not, as a rule." His eyes linger: Harry's mouth, the marks left on his neck, the inches of skin being revealed as Harry's hands, long and tanned and lovely, go to work on his own shirt buttons. "Apparently it's only for you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A little bit of peril

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crushedveneer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crushedveneer/gifts).



> Dear crushedveneer: I think we must have matched for this fandom just on 'injured sex', but I loved the prompts in your letter so went with those instead. Really hope you enjoy! (And that you don't mind eight miles of build up before the payoff, omg - it all ran away with itself a bit.)
> 
> Thank you [concernedlily](http://archiveofourown.org/users/concernedlily) for the beta <3
> 
> [Very very important visual of 19 year old wunderkind (cough boss's nephew cough) Agent Galahad](https://media.giphy.com/media/3oEdvabI0vQ2XzEEOQ/giphy.gif).
> 
> Now [translated into Chinese](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7674214) by [lilighjk](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lilighjk)!

Joining Kingsman is like being born again twice: first into a dream world of electronics and innovation and people who get as flustered and giddy over new bits of tech as he does, and second on the day of the royal wedding when he ends up temporarily assigned as handler to Agent Galahad.

"You don't sound like Barbara," Galahad comments.

"No, sir. We've reshuffled the workload, people wanted to watch the wedding." Scott can see them when he glares back over his shoulder, crowded around the biggest television in the corner with their glasses of champagne and best outfits as though they've actually been invited to the stupid circus.

"I see. You're not a fan of the royals?"

"Glad to serve Queen and country, sir, but I have no interest in romantic comedies."

That makes Galahad laugh, a quick surprised little exhale as he's running. "Yes, it is rather a farce, isn't it? Though I must say her dress looked tremendous from up here. Like a big expensive parachute. The creases almost looked like a deliberate design." His voice is crackly with static, fading in and out. "What's your name?"

"RD453," Scott recites from his ID badge, fiddling with the controls trying to get a clearer signal. "Is—"

"What? Hardy? You're breaking up."

Hardy's as good a name as any, and certainly better than his own. "Yes, pleasure to make your acquaintance. You're six storeys up and running, sir, I'd concentrate on my feet if I were you."

There's the sound of a brief scuffle and a muffled cry, then Galahad says calmly, "Thank you for the advice. Last pursuer stunned and ready for pickup. Bedivere's status, please?"

"Task complete, escorting the ringleader to the van."

"Wonderful. Are we calling it mission accomplished, then?"

"Not until you return to HQ and complete your paperwork, sir," Scott reminds him, and Galahad groans down his ear, agonised, as though he's been punched in the stomach.

When they actually meet in person the next morning, the man is a million miles away from anything he'd expected. Over the comms Galahad sounded as though he'd been doing this for years, confident and capable, so when an infant with huge fluffy hair and dimples in his cheeks appears in the doorway as Scott's slicing a lemon for his tea, he assumes the guy is someone's new assistant or work experience placement.

"Good morning," the newcomer says. "I'm looking for Hardy."

"Who?" Scott says absently, mopping spilled lemon juice from the counter with a tissue. "Do you mean R&D? That's us."

"Oh. Yes, perhaps that's what he said. It was a terrible line."

Then the penny drops and Scott sets his teacup down and stares at him. "You're Agent Galahad?"

Galahad looks no less surprised. "You're Hardy?"

"Yes. Well, no, that's not my name, but I was on the line with you yesterday. RD453," he explains a bit sheepishly, gesturing to the ID badge clipped to the front of his jumper. The black and white photograph there is terrible, a moment caught somewhere in that awkward place between expressions making him look weak-chinned and lazy-eyed, but it's too late to turn away without seeming rude so he stands there motionless while Galahad inspects the badge closely as though he's committing the few details there to memory: department, code number, security clearance level.

"Then what  _is_  your name?" Galahad asks when he's done, stepping closer to the counter and taking the lid off the teapot to wrinkle his nose at the cooling contents. He pours himself a cup anyway and puts milk and three cubes of sugar in it, then somehow manages to make the first sip look defiant, as though he knows that people with any taste are going to find him disgusting and not only does he not give a fuck, he's actually quite pleased about it.

"Scott."

"Harry," says Galahad, and as he sticks out his free hand to shake his ridiculous smile returns, dimples as deep as infinity and slightly too many teeth on show. He looks impossibly young, barely more than a schoolboy – not that Scott can object to that, really, being only eighteen himself, but he's not the one being paid to race around the rooftops of Ludgate Hill with a pair of guns in his hands and an assassin on his heels. "Terrific to meet you properly. Listen, I hope you don't think this strange of me but I bought you a present."

"A present," Scott echoes, and Galahad – Harry – nods, looking vaguely apologetic.

"I did intend it for Barbara but since she stood me up I think it's only fair. May I?" He doesn't bother waiting for a response, but sets his teacup down on the counter and takes Scott's from his hand, sloshing its contents into a mug he pulls from his briefcase: a mug painted in a hideous twee design of flowers and crowns and scrolls, a line of gold around the rim, and Charles and Diana's faces gazing gravely out from the middle of all the frippery as though it's commemorating their funerals and not their wedding. "Bought it as part of my cover from a fellow selling memorabilia in the street. I didn't think she, or you now, I suppose, would appreciate the commemorative tie or ornamental thimble."

"I don't want to be rude but I'm not entirely sure I appreciate this either."

That makes Harry grin, picking up his own teacup again and leaning against the counter to drink it with a sort of casual, innate grace in the way he moves, all long legs and flawlessly tailored pinstripes. "I know. Dreadful, isn't it? Please feel free to smash it when I leave. I just felt I ought to mark my first mission with a memento somehow."

"Well." Scott looks at the hideous thing again, the circle of lemon bobbing about under the names printed around the inside of the rim, and dutifully says, "Thank you very much, I shall treasure it," with just enough of an edge of sarcasm to make Harry's eyes glint with amusement in response.

"I ought to go back and finish that blasted report. Do you know this job comes with an  _office_?" He looks almost startled by his own words, as though he's only just remembered. "I must say I didn't expect there to be quite so much admin involved when they were making me crawl through mud and tipping me out of a plane without a parachute."

"Bit of a let down?" Scott asks sympathetically, turning the sarcasm dial a notch higher still because he doesn't even have an office, he has a flimsy cubicle and a spot at a workbench in a room that rarely goes more than three hours without suffering an explosion from somebody's enthusiastic weapons prototype experiment. An office on a level above the ground might as well be a fairytale castle in the air.

"Good lord, no. Living the dream and so on. If I hadn't won the place I'd be stuck in a bloody economics lecture in some Cambridge prison by now." Harry rinses his cup and upends it on the draining board, drying himself off on the front of his thousand pound jacket carelessly like it's a baker's apron when he can't find a tea towel before extending his hand again, grasping Scott's fingers warmly and giving him another flash of that dimpled schoolboy grin. "Lovely to put a face to a misheard name. Enjoy your tea and your magnificent present."

"I suppose this awful design makes it  _royal-tea_."

It's a stupid kneejerk response that falls out of him accidentally like a burp and he regrets it immediately, at least until Harry snorts a laugh loud enough to startle someone down the corridor into dropping her paperwork and says, "Apologise at once, that was fucking appalling," in the sort of tone that implies what he really means by it is  _well, I suppose we're friends now_. "I'm taking this newspaper as compensation." Then he filches the copy of the Sun someone had left in the rack by the kettle, Charles and Diana kissing across the whole of the front page, and vanishes back through the door to the lifts.

It's the beginning of a lot of things.

 

* * *

 

Fourteen months in and Galahad's become a regular visitor in what's semi-affectionately referred to as 'the dungeon' by its denizens. On the east side of the lower level is the handlers' department, where Harry spends far too much of his time between missions pulling up a chair to gossip with Barbara and Linda and all the rest. He seems to thrive on both the attention and the endless food they insist on offering him as a token of their adoration, like he's a spoiled little lapdog, and in turn he's got a spoiled little dog of his own who follows him about like a shadow and does literal backflips in return for scraps of lunches from his master's gang of surrogate mothers. When Scott sees Harry there he's usually got either a sandwich or a biscuit in his hand, or he's mid-argument and gesticulating wildly over some Coronation Street plot point or pop star romance he's dissatisfied or pleased about, suit mussed and covered in dog hair and muddy paw prints while the handlers hover about waiting to fight one another for the honour of going at him with a lint roller when it's time for him to leave.

The west side of the wing is research and development, where Harry keeps trying to sneak even though he's not really allowed to be there. Luckily for him he seems to have charmed Merlin somewhere along the way during his agent training, so he's not always shooed out as quickly as the other agents who come lurking around to stick their noses where they're not welcome.

Unluckily for Scott, that often means trying to solder tiny components together or draw up intricate blueprints under Harry's curious gaze, and Harry's gaze is a thing that's beginning to cause real problems for his levels of concentration. He starts talking instead in some attempt to keep his thoughts steady, quietly explaining things to Harry as he works: the reasons things are done the way they are, the problems they have, the things they're hoping to achieve, the exponential advancements being made in technology every day and what that means for Kingsman weaponry and defences in terms of future possibilities.

"You must be joking, this is science fiction," Harry always says, half-laughing at some fantastical idea Merlin or Scott or one of the others is excitedly drawing in chalk on the blackboard. He ends up graciously apologising when the thing actually comes to fruition and sauntering back down to regale everybody with slightly exaggerated stories of how their inventions saved his life out in Moscow or Berlin or wherever he'd found a chance to use them. He's all charm and bad jokes and puppyish enthusiasm, and Scott slightly hates himself when he feels himself falling because it's just  _so obvious_  and that makes him furious somehow. Everybody loves Galahad. He's impossible not to love.

Scott's explaining Merlin's plans for a new weaponised wristwatch one day when Harry says, "Do you know, I don't think I know your surname. Isn't that awful?" and Scott stops unrolling his drawings and looks at him sideways, confused.

"Yes you do."

"I don't believe I do."

"It's Scott, idiot."

Harry frowns. "Scott Scott the Scot? Well, that's unfortunate."

"Scott's my surname."

" _No_." Harry sounds slightly anguished, staring at him. "I've been calling you by your surname this whole time and you never corrected me? Bloody rude of me to assume, I'm so sorry."

"It's alright, everyone calls me that," Scott says. He can feel warmth creeping into his cheeks and the pit of his stomach and turns his attention back to the pages, holding them down at the corners with paperweights and a stapler. "Look. The idea is we store the darts in different compartments here and here under the face. We're still working out how to fit them around the mechanisms without affecting the timekeeping accuracy, but—"

"So," Harry interrupts him. He's got his gossip face on now, eager for a secret. "What's your name?"

"It's irrelevant. We're considering amnesia, stun, and fast-acting poison. Anything else you'd find helpful?"

"Your name."

"Walter," Scott says through gritted teeth. "My parents were literature professors and couldn't help themselves. We're hoping you'll be able to simply turn this band around the face to access the different chambers, possibly with the winding crown as the trigger."

"It looks wonderful," Harry says, bending over the drawing to look more closely at all the annotated parts – because even with his shocking hairdo and his fondness for hideous puns and his frankly disgusting obsession with Duran Duran's love lives, Harry is a Kingsman and a gentleman and knows when to let a subject drop. He never ever mentions it again.

 

* * *

 

Guinevere poaches Scott one day to cover in her department when half the handlers come down with the flu at the same time. It's a change of pace he enjoys every now and then. Very early on in his training he could already tell his heart was in the weapons and technology development, actually being  _there_  in the workshop surrounded by cogs and cables and everybody's brilliant brains: but there's always something impossibly exciting about the chance to witness it all in action as well, all these wild ideas that come to him or one of the others in a middle of the night dream or after far too long without sleep, processed through a dozen stages of planning and prototypes and refinement all the way to their final assignments as tools to help save lives.

Lancelot signs off at the end of his completed mission with, "Tremendous job on these new darts, by the way – please pass my thanks to Merlin and the team," and Scott sits there grinning to himself like a fool for a good five minutes, scribbling notes about extending the update to pocket watches since it's going so well.

There's the short clanging pulse of an alarm sounding then, and on the wall at the far side of the room the light above GALAHAD starts flashing.

He pushes his notebook aside and flips the comms line open, since everyone else is already connected. "Receiving you, Galahad. Go ahead."

"Bloody hell, it would be you."

"Nice to hear your dulcet tones as well." Scott finds the right folder in the stack on his desk and flips through the papers to find the mission details full of words like  _undercover, long term, fraud, infiltration_. "The mission file says not to expect contact unless there's a problem. What's the problem?"

"Ah, well, the thing is." Harry sounds embarrassed, which isn't like him at all. "Mrs Villiers has expressed a desire to, you know, invite me over to look at her bedroom furniture up close, which naturally I'm fully prepared to do in the interests of national security." He must sense Scott's rolling eyes, although hopefully not the strange sinking of his heart, because his voice when he continues sounds less embarrassed, more slightly amused at the ridiculous places his job keeps taking him. "I'm in need of advice, really. If I do it and and Mr Villiers finds out there's bound to be trouble. If I turn her down, it's possible that Victoria might try to make it extremely difficult for me to remain in this social circle I've been building. She's terribly proud, I doubt she takes rejection any better than I do. I shall be able to work with it either way, I expect, but is one more preferable to the other from a handler's perspective?"

"I'm not touching this one with a ten foot pole. Hold the line, I'll put you through to Guinevere."

Six days later, the evidence department sends through a stack of blackmail photographs to keep on file: Harry on a chaise, flushed and rumpled, bow tie askew and hair in wild disarray, lying on top of an older lady in an indigo evening gown with his mouth pressing against the pale line of her neck. Like a flip book the photos speed through the pair's movements, the roaming hands – his on her breasts, hers on his backside and tugging the tails of his shirt out of his waistband – and the hook of her leg around his, their uninhibited kisses, and the breathtaking brilliance of Harry's smile, as though he's never smiled for anybody else in the world but her.

Scott tucks them into the green cardboard folder and ties it shut with the cord for somebody else to deal with, then goes back to the workshop to start drawing plans for the increasingly violent set of weapons he's just thought of.

 

* * *

 

Scott's twenty-first birthday comes with an unwanted office party: he walks into the workshop for his night shift and jumps a foot in the air at the sudden yell of  _surprise_  and the blare of noisemakers, heart sinking low with dread at dozens of pairs of expectant eyes turned on him and waiting for a speech. He stammers something vague, he can't remember what, and gratefully accepts the teacup full of gin Merlin brings for him before steeling his nerves and heading into the fray to start the dreaded  _mingling_.

It actually turns out to be quite fun, against all his will and expectations. Merlin and Guinevere sternly announce they're allowed just one hour of fooling about before they all get back to work, and something about having a deadline adds a note of frenzy to the whole thing: a drink or three too many considering it's the beginning of a twelve-hour shift for half of them, some over-enthusiastic dancing in a corner where someone's set up a record player and rigged a set of coloured lightbulbs to flash in pulses like a disco, a cake lovingly iced by Linda and Barbara to look like the Famicom he'd brought back from a trip to Tokyo to lord over all the Neanderthals still playing on Ataris. Several of the agents who aren't out on missions come down for a drink and a handshake, though they draw the line at dancing, and even Arthur himself puts in an appearance.

"You appear to have made quite an impact," he says, and Scott has no idea how to respond to that. It seems true, he thinks, cautiously looking around at everyone he works with, those he knows well and those he can barely remember seeing before. The ones who catch his eye give him a smile or a raised-drink salute and something seems to bubble up in him, an irrepressible sort of pleasure and pride that makes him grin back and shake Arthur's hand with possibly a bit more enthusiasm than they'd both expected. He's been invested and content in his job since his first minute through the doors, but it's the first time he's realised that somewhere along the line it's morphed into  _happiness_.

"Thank you, sir. I'm very lucky."

 _Lucky_  rings in his head again half an hour later when he's pressed against the door of the toilet cubicle with a tongue in his mouth and a thigh pressed between his own and Bob From Accounts' fingers nimbly unfastening his fly buttons to give him a drunken birthday pull. He leaves Scott there with a smirk and a  _many happy returns, old chap_ , slumped against the tiles and heaving for breath, tasting of cigarette smoke and gin. As birthdays and secret liaisons both go, he thinks as he's trying to straighten his tie and un-crumple his jumper, he's certainly had worse.

There's the niggling little feeling that something's missing, or more specifically some _one_ , but he puts the thought aside as best he can and goes to say goodbye to people when Merlin starts yelling that the party's over and everyone not on the clock can bugger off. Easier said than done: it's reached the point where Harry is everywhere, insinuating his presence into every bit of where he doesn't belong:

A teacup Scott bought him for Christmas in retaliation for the Charles and Diana monstrosity, a hideous ceramic tankard with 'Greetings From Historic Bath' written below a clumsy painting of an ugly Roman soldier; Harry claimed the snobs upstairs looked at it like they were planning to smash it, so it stays in the dungeon kitchen ready for his visits. His own safety goggles and white coat, embroidered  _Galahad_  over the breast pocket in golden thread, hanging in the cupboard with the others for all the times he comes snooping around at testing time. Stuck to the top of Scott's monitor with a sliver of duct tape is an origami crane Harry folded from an expenses report during a boring meeting upstairs and gave to him as a mascot. He's as present as anybody, but he's not there.

"Phonecall for you on line four," someone tells him when he's got a face full of sandwich at two in the morning, and he finds an empty desk to take it.

"This is Scott."

"This is Harry."

"Hello. Anything the matter?"

"Yes, actually. It's your birthday and I'm not there to congratulate you in person. How did the cake look? Lindy was going to make you a Q*bert because you keep swearing when your mad experiments go wrong, but I wasn't sure how much you'd appreciate that."

"I might have known that was your idea." Somehow, Harry manages to make silence sound smug. "It was good. I've saved you a piece in the fridge but if I get hungry later you're just going to have to wait for next time."

"I'll be here a few days longer than expected," Harry says ruefully. "Oh well. If I ask her nicely I'm sure she'll make me one of my own, birthday or not. She's very fond of me."

"Everybody's very fond of you." Maybe it's the lingering effects of the birthday toasts loosening his inhibitions and his mouth, or maybe it's just that they've reached the stage in their odd friendship where things like this can be said and they don't feel awkward any more. "You're everybody's favourite. It'd be a serious point of contention if you weren't so bloody deserving of it, you charming little bastard."

There's laughter in Harry's voice when he replies, "Nonsense, I have it on very good authority that half the ladies upstairs think you're extremely attractive, in a sort of, you know, those old films where the prim librarian takes off her glasses and lets her hair down and it turns out she's a Hollywood goddess in disguise. They're absolutely on fire with wanting to mess you up." His voice turns lower, teasing in a way that makes Scott's spine prickle. "Take off your glasses and just pull your tie a little askew."

"Don't be absurd." His voice is steady, by some miraculous feat of self-control, but it's an image he's sure he won't forget for a while: Harry's fingers, long and elegant, deadly on a gun trigger or around an enemy neck, sliding up the front of Scott's jumper so gently to ease the knot at his throat loose and clear the way for his mouth to press a kiss in the hollow there. It feels worse, somehow, far more inappropriate and rude, to have these sort of intimate thoughts about a friend than to have the occasional filthy dreams and daydreams about kneeling in front of him and swallowing him deep. "Haven't you heard the way the ladies down here talk about  _you_?"

"It's only because we're the youngest. We mustn't get complacent. Everyone's been starved for beauty, then in we walk three decades younger than the rest of them and—"

"Shut up. I'm supposed to be working, get lost. Where are you, anyway?"

"New York."

"Are there no girls there you can win over?"

"Plenty, I'm sure. I'd feel awful, though, taking someone to bed while you slave away on your birthday alone."

"Please don't worry yourself about my needs, I was taken to the toilets earlier."

"Well, that sounds romantic," Harry says, somewhere between amusement and distaste. "You do realise I shan't rest now until I find out who she was?"

"Good luck with that," Scott tells him, and hangs up the phone.

 

* * *

 

What Harry said about being the youngest doesn't seem to make much of a difference to Scott, but now it's in his mind it's impossible not to see it happening with Harry: the way he flirts outrageously with all the women and blossoms like a flower under their attention every time; the occasional evidence photograph of him with his hands all over a swindling politician or a mobster's wife; the heat in his eyes the few times he returns to the shop after a mission when Scott is entering or leaving, hair dishevelled and marks sucked into his neck by some mystery possessive mouth, a louche sort of grin on his face if anybody comments.

"Gawain's getting married," Harry tells him in the pub on a rare night they're both off work at the same time. "She doesn't know what he does, she thinks he's a tailor. Seems dreadful to go into a thing like that with such an enormous lie from the start, but..." He fades off, stares at his Guinness for a moment, then shrugs and takes a sip. "Not my life."

And Scott, who's been sleeping almost exclusively with a game designer for the last several months and telling him he's an accountant for a Savile Row tailor shop, wonders whether this is the moment it should all come out. Harry's looking at him expectantly, as though he's waiting for Scott to join in with some sarcastic opinion on the gossip, but the silence stretches on and on until it's just a second or two past the point of discomfort.

"Well," Harry starts, as if to change the subject, at the same time as Scott tells him all in one hurried breath, "I'm seeing someone and they don't know what we do either."

Harry sits back in his seat, eyebrows flying high. " _Really_?" There's a fascinating sort of battle in the shift of his expressions, the attempt to be a good friend and not pry at vicious war with his desperate curiosity and insatiable hunger to know everybody's business. "I suppose it's a different matter, you know, merely seeing someone as opposed to marrying them. Different levels of truth required." His eyes narrow slightly. "If you're planning to marry her and this is the first I've heard of it I'm going to invite you outside for fisticuffs."

The pub is quiet, which makes it all strangely more difficult. Scott imagines what it'd be like with more people around, the jumbled hum of voices there to make his own seem less prominent. "Couldn't even if I wanted to."

"Why not?"

"Men can't marry men."

"Ohh," Harry says softly. He takes another drink of his Guinness, wipes the foam off his lip with his thumb, and stares at Scott for a few moments as though he's thinking over the new information, before giving him that glorious dimpled smile. "Well, let's hope one day the world catches up with common sense and human decency."

He reaches his glass across the table between them and Scott touches it with his own, the gentle  _clink_  like the turn of a key somewhere inside him that lets something heavy out to dissipate and vanish in the air. It's absurd how much lighter it feels to let it all go, even if it's only to one person. "Let's hope so."

 

* * *

 

Aged twenty-six, eight years into his Kingsman career, Scott becomes Merlin on his grandfather's retirement. This time Harry's there for the party, but this time the party is  _official_ : seven courses in the dining room with all the other department heads and the agents who aren't away on missions, complete with several formal toasts and speeches because pomp and ceremony is the only way Britain knows how to give a thing importance.

Arthur radiates disapproval from the head of the table throughout the evening, which is fine, it's expected.  _He'll give you a hard time because he's suspicious of youth and change_ , the old Merlin had said before boarding a flight for his first real holiday in decades.  _Ignore him. He'll come around soon enough. Family or not, you know I would never have brought you here in the first place if I didn't think you were up to task_."

"To nepotism," Harry says with his glass raised and a smirking grin on his impossible, wonderful face. Merlin kicks his ankle hard under the table and Arthur glares until Harry sets his glass down and raises his hands instead in a mockery of surrender. "My apologies, Arthur. I know we're all here on merit alone."

"Most of us are," Arthur says icily, returning to his cheese plate while Harry rolls his eyes at Merlin across the table and tries not to laugh. 'Winding Up Uncle Chester' is his favourite game after poker and he's frighteningly good at both, putting extra effort into it tonight in retaliation for Arthur making him leave Mr Pickle at the HQ kennels as a condition of his dinner invitation.

Afterwards, the agents and heads scatter in various directions, some home, some on missions, some back to HQ. As the guest of honour Merlin's forced to linger until the end, accepting congratulations and answering polite small talk questions about department changes and things they're working on. It's almost midnight by the time everyone's gone, Arthur taking his leave with a briskly spoken, "Merlin," as though the name still tastes sour in his mouth before climbing into the back of his cab and vanishing down the street.

"You look done in," Harry says from somewhere behind him, and Merlin makes a most undignified sort of yelping sound, jumping and whirling around to find his friend leaning there against the doorframe of fitting room one.

"Bloody hell, I thought you'd left."

"Without saying goodbye? For shame." He sounds softly scandalised, but there's a smile in there somewhere as he reaches up to loosen his tie and unfasten his top shirt button. "Nightcap?"

Merlin pours, breaking open a bottle of his favourite Macallan from the crate the others bought him as a congratulations gift, and settles there on the leather sofa beside Harry. The shop is dim, just the low golden glow of a lamp to illuminate the room and Harry's face. There's a horrid-looking bruise on his cheek from his latest mission, purpled and swollen with a shallow scuff beginning to scab over in the centre.

It suits him. There's something strangely thrilling about Harry's dichotomy, however it displays itself: his exceptional manners marred by his tendency to pepper everything he says with the word fuck; the way he concentrates so hard on paperwork or a favourite novel that he forgets to eat sometimes, but fidgets and yawns through all his meetings; and now this, the narrow neatness of his waist in cobalt sharkskin stripes and the violent livid bruise on his face. The contrast of it does nothing at all to mar his magnificence, but somehow manages to heighten it: a single flaw to show up the perfection in a new and brighter light.

It's possible that Merlin is slightly drunk. He feels drunk. When he's drunk he can't help staring.

"You should put something on that bruise," he says, forcing himself to look away into the swirling amber of his whisky because it seems safer. Then Harry's fingers close around his wrist, tentative at first and then resolute, drawing Merlin's hand up to settle it there around his cheek and jaw. His skin feels warm under Merlin's palm, shifting there slightly every time Harry blinks or tries to talk.

"This is helping," he manages eventually. When Merlin looks at him in surprise Harry holds his gaze, finishing his whisky and setting the glass down so he can slide both hands over Merlin's as though he's afraid it might be pulled away. "It's very possible I've got the wrong end of the stick here, and if that's the case I apologise, but—"

"You can have any end of the stick you want," Merlin says fiercely and kisses him, savage and frantic with years of abandoned desire. Harry makes a noise into his mouth, something like delight and relief and pleasure and hunger all tangled up in one, and climbs right into Merlin's lap to carry on kissing him with a fury that almost hurts. There's the awkward press of their glasses clacking together, the uncomfortable pull of Merlin's suit digging under his arms – not tailored like Harry's for movement, but for sitting still and looking smart. Certainly it was never intended for  _this_ , Merlin unintentionally sliding lower on the smoothness of the leather sofa so the jacket bunches up behind his neck, crumpling in the grasp of Harry's clutching fingers.

"Not here," Harry's saying, muffled and clumsy against Merlin's mouth. It's a half-hearted objection; his kisses don't let up in the least, hot and messy and noisy as he wriggles in Merlin's lap, settling harder against the sudden desperate heaviness of Merlin's cock.

"Where?" He's got Harry's tie completely undone and four of his buttons open already; if they don't relocate soon they're never going to.

"Your place is closer. Wipe the security tapes first or we'll be in for it."

It's a sudden, sobering reminder of where they are and what they're doing. Merlin drops his forehead to Harry's chest, breathing hard against the triangle of skin he's bared there and feeling the gentle pressure of Harry's fingers stroking up and down the back of his neck.

"Right," he says eventually, tapping Harry on the hip until he stands up awkwardly, using the motion of it to haul Merlin to his feet as well and dragging him right into another flustered kiss that makes a creeping thrill shudder slowly down the length of his spine, chased by the slide of Harry's hands wrapped around him and smoothing out the creases in the back of his jacket. "Stop it or I'm having you on the floor right in front of this window."

" _Don't_ ," Harry says, hoarse and anguished. For a terrible lurching moment Merlin thinks he means  _don't do anything, this needs to stop_ , until Harry's hands move down to Merlin's backside and yank him closer, pressing hard and hot against the front of him and breathing a fumbling string of swears against Merlin's ear until he finds the right words again. "Now you've fucking said it and I'll never be able to think of anything else again for the rest of my life."

"Call the cab." Merlin  _can't stop kissing him_  now it's allowed, barely even stopping long enough to force out the words in between. "I'll delete the recordings and then we can go."

Harry's just as bad, hands cupped close around Merlin's jaw, ending one lingering kiss by gently sucking Merlin's lower lip until he feels weak, as though the only thing keeping him upright is Harry standing steadfast as ever in front of him. "Cabbies gossip. We can't hide this." He twists them, nudging his fingers against Merlin's jaw to turn his head so he can see their reflections in the dressing room mirror, flushed and rumpled, then Merlin feels the careful tug of teeth on his earlobe and hears, watches, Harry whisper there, "I look as though I've been fucked already."

"Is that how you want it?" Merlin murmurs, finding Harry's mouth again and licking into him. His fingers snag in the ridiculous tangle of hair to keep him close, and Harry whimpers the most beautiful needy little noise Merlin thinks he's ever heard.

"Please."

"Two minutes."

He runs like lightning to the security office upstairs and winds all the relevant videos back to record over the incriminating scene. When he makes it back down to the shop Harry is resplendent again, buttoned up and tie knotted and hair finger-combed perfectly back into place, but it makes him look paradoxically  _more_  of a mess: the perfection of his suit a deliciously jarring contrast against the kissed-red, bitten flush of his mouth.

It's only half a mile to Merlin's flat above Purdey's gun shop. They start in silence, walking rapidly through the post-midnight chill, then by the time they're as far as Berkeley Square they're almost jogging in their haste. By accident Merlin catches Harry's eye – and then it's funny, everything about this ludicrous night suddenly making him want to laugh in a way that's probably a good deal of panicky hysteria alongside the sense of  _finally, thank you god_. He breaks out into a run, streaking off across the gardens at a diagonal with Harry just behind, swearing and laughing and trying to keep up.

There's a moment on reaching the front door when Merlin thinks Harry's about to throw himself on him for another round of insistent, trembling kisses, and he's not sure he'll be able to resist even though there are still a few cars and people about at this time of night. At the last moment Harry seems to think better of it and veers off, leaning heavily against the wall beside the door with a look of extreme frustration on his face while Merlin fumbles for his keys.

"Do you need some help?" he asked, exaggeratedly polite, and Merlin gives him a dirty sideways look as the lock finally turns.

"No. Get inside."

Harry races ahead of him up the stairs – which is nice for Merlin, definitely improves the boring view of wood panels and carpets – and waits there impatiently by the door, fidgeting the way he does in meetings, until Merlin's unlocked it and they're both inside, lingering a foot apart from one another just inside the threshold. There's something different now they're here, safe and private; all the want is still there, but the urgency of the way they'd flung themselves together back at the shop has eased off and now Merlin's not sure what to do next.

"Drink?" he offers, cautious and strangely awkward.

Harry holds up the bottle of whisky he's carried all the way from the shop. "No, thank you."

"So..."

"Merlin," Harry says softly, fading from nervousness into a beautiful little hopeful smile and tapping his forefinger against his own lips to demand a kiss.

"Galahad," Merlin replies as he's closing the gap between them, but it sounds all wrong. Merlin is the first name he's ever owned that feels as though it fits him somehow, an identity as immediately comfortable as his first bespoke suit. Galahad is a mask. " _Harry_ ," he amends, and Harry's smile widens, dimples notching deep shadows into his cheeks in the dim light of the hallway, as he slips his hand behind Merlin's neck and pulls him into a kiss that leaves all the others from before in the dust.

Somewhere in there, somehow without parting for more than half a second, they navigate the corners and doors to find the bedroom, shedding jackets and ties and treading on the backs of their shoes to prise them off without going to the hassle of undoing the laces. Harry's the first on the bed, wiping his wet mouth on the back of his hand and fumbling to unfasten his cufflinks, never looking away from Merlin. There's a scorching intensity in his eyes, a sort of unguarded hunger that Merlin's never seen in him before, or anyone else for that matter, and he can't resist the urge to ask.

"Why now?" He drops his own cufflinks in the dish on the dresser then reaches for Harry's hand, kissing over his knuckles and slipping the last link through for him. "What changed?"

"You need to kiss me or I'm going to fucking explode," Harry demands, drawing Merlin closer by their linked fingers until he's kneeling on the bed, settling between the sprawl of Harry's thighs and feeling the way Harry's breath leaves him in a huge shudder of a gasp when Merlin rocks gently against his cock. "I didn't know you wanted men until you already had one."

"Harry, I've not seen him in months."

"No." Harry's hands fight between them, opening the line of buttons down the front of Merlin's shirt. "May I confess something?"

"Will it make me want to stop?" As if anything in the world up to and including a raging house fire possibly could.

"Barbara's known for, oh, years. Seven years at least. There's a reason she's so good at her job, she sees everything. Poor old girl's listened to me bang on about you since we were nineteen. And she told me a while ago there was, you know..." His voice fades into a choking sort of moan when Merlin sets his teeth against Harry's pulse and bites down gently. "She was watching the dinner from the corner camera. She kept saying in my ear, he's looking at you. Stars in his eyes for you. Heart beating out of his ribcage like a bloody Tex Avery cartoon for you. All this time I've thought she was teasing me but every time she said it, I looked up and you were." Buttons completed, he slides the warmth of his palm up Merlin's chest to press against his thudding heart and waits, breath held, as though he's afraid he's buggered something up by confessing.

He has, sort of, but possibly not in the way he thinks.

"Seven years," Merlin repeats flatly. Beneath him, Harry, all wide eyes and stupid fluffy hair, gazes up at him and nods. "This could've happened seven years ago."

Again Harry nods, but adds defensively, "I can't be entirely blamed for the waste of time, surely. You didn't say anything either."

 _That's the funny thing about wandering back to HQ after half your missions smelling of ladies' perfume with lipstick smeared on your collar_ , Merlin wants to say,  _it doesn't exactly send the kind of signals I usually look for_. Somehow in the heat of the moment it comes out far more aggressively than that, hot hushed words breathed against Harry's mouth between an attack of furious kisses.

"I fucking hate those pictures."

Harry's breathing is unsteady, hands sliding up from Merlin's chest to cradle his jaw and tilt him to a better angle to meet the kisses with an attack of his own, a suck and a taunting little nip of teeth. "What pictures?"

"You and every dodgy woman in Britain."

"That's work, it's meaningless. You had"—his face twists into disgust so acute it's almost a caricature—" _relationships_." His expression shifts again when he feels Merlin's fingers searching for his fly buttons, smoothing out into a sort of yearning, open-mouthed surprise, as though he'd forgotten somehow what they came here to do. "There were men too," he says, almost gasps, pressing up impatiently into the cup of Merlin's hand.

"Don't remind me." He can remember quite clearly on his own the occasional boorish stench of too much expensive cologne rubbed off onto Harry's collar and masking his own, and the curled-lip look of distaste on Arthur's face the time Harry strolled back from a mission with his briefcase full of retrieved documents and the pink graze of stubble rash all over his chin. "Seven years ago, would I have been your first?"

Harry looks at him and blinks slowly, long lashes casting longer shadows on his cheeks in the dim light of the street lamp shining through the curtains. "Yes," he says softly. He's gone still under Merlin's hand, letting him slip the buttons through to open Harry's trousers for him. "Would I have been yours?"

"No, I went to Eton."

That makes Harry laugh, curling his hand around Merlin's neck to draw him into another kiss. "You think there was none of that funny business at Harrow?"

"But not for you."

"Absolutely not, ugh. Spotty schoolboys?" He breathes in a way that's almost laughing when Merlin finally touches him, delving under the waistband of Harry's underpants to reach the velvet warmth of his cock. "I've always had rather a fondness for"—and he kisses after every few words like a sort of punctuation—"tall sarcastic scientists, handsome as heaven, with shaved head, and glasses, aged around twenty-six, and eight months."

"If I see any about I'll be sure to send them your way."

Harry's wet in his palm already, smearing Merlin's fingers sticky, and the noises he's making as Merlin strokes him are obscene and gorgeous, needy little nonsense vocalisations on every breath out. He fights for words, kisses abandoned as he tips his head back for Merlin to brush lips and tongue up the line of his neck, and Merlin feels the sound as a gentle buzzing vibration on his mouth when Harry finally gets it together enough to speak. " _Please_ ," he says, squirming up into Merlin's fist, "do something, please."

"Pretend for me." The words come from nowhere, suddenly there in Merlin's mouth being spoken before he's even registered their presence in his brain. Harry makes a questioning little noise and Merlin soothes him with another kiss, a long slow press of his lips against Harry's thudding pulse. "Pretend there's been nobody else."

Harry swears low, shuddering over the fricative of the  _fuck_  and tilting his head back down to look at Merlin curiously. "You don't strike me as the jealous type."

"I'm not, as a rule." His eyes linger: Harry's mouth, the marks left on his neck, the inches of skin being revealed as Harry's hands, long and tanned and lovely, go to work on his own shirt buttons. "Apparently it's only for you."

"There's no need." Harry's mouth flickers briefly into a lazy, crooked smirk before he resettles his expression into one of wide-eyed innocence, complete with wavering shy glances at Merlin and away again, and a nervous little bite of the lip that makes Merlin want to lean in and do it for him. "There's been nobody else. Will you show me?"

It's almost worse; Merlin almost feels like a mark, twisted around Harry's act and ready to spill his deepest secrets at the first crook of a finger. It's better when Harry smiles again, the real sort, not a smirk, and winds his arms around Merlin's neck to draw him back into a kiss that feels endless. They're breathless long before they part, shirts dragged off and legs tangled. Merlin's trousers came open somewhere along the way and when he moves it's a long slow delicious slide against Harry's cock, only the two straining bits of fabric of their underwear keeping them apart, and that's easily fixed. Harry's gaze goes molten hot when Merlin tugs impatiently at his trousers, and when he's finally bare he sprawls there against the sheets, unabashed and beautiful.

"You too," he demands, eyes fixed on the glimpse of Merlin's underwear between the open halves of his fly. "Let me see. Because, you know, I've never seen anyone like this before."

"Fuck off." Merlin's starting to regret letting his mouth race on ahead of his brain, but Harry laughs softly, pulls him closer, kisses him until he stops frowning. There's the hitch of his breathing when Merlin curls his fingers around him again, strokes him up and down in a slow, teasing grip – then Harry's breath seems to stick altogether, almost choking him before bursting free in a wavering sort of gasp when Merlin starts kissing a line down his chest. "Is this alright?" Merlin checks, tracing the point of his tongue across the muscles in Harry's abdomen and the diagonal ridge at his hip.

"Please." There's a gratifying stammer in Harry's voice.

"Be specific."

"Your fucking  _mouth_ ," Harry gasps, very nearly moans, wriggling on the bed trying to move closer but getting nowhere at all: Merlin's fingers are on his hips, pressing him down, urging him still. "Show me, please, nobody's done this before, you're my first"—and Merlin wants to tell him  _stop, you don't need to pretend any more, I don't care where you've been, I only care that you're here now_ , but there's still a rushing dirty thrill that rockets through him at the words, a tingling sort of heat making the hairs on his arms stand up. He's only inches away and it's so easy just to turn his head, feel the wet slide of Harry's cock on his cheek drawing a line to his lips, and easier still to start pressing hot, open-mouthed kisses along the twisting path of a vein. Harry's fingers are winding and releasing around huge handfuls of the sheets, as though he's trying to keep control of himself, then one escapes and Merlin feels fingers stroking with deliberate tenderness over the back of his head as if Harry's run out of wheedling words but isn't ready yet to give up on his begging entirely.

It's become a necessary habit to be overly careful in situations like this, but there's a magnificent sort of freedom in knowing Harry's medical file as well as his own after all the time spent checking up on the agents' new tracking implants over the last half a year. For the first time in ages Merlin takes it bare, sucking him deep, feeling every hot straining inch of Harry's cock along the length of his tongue until Harry's groaning again, wordless and muffled in the press of a pillow.

"Harry," Merlin says, pulling back just enough to be able to speak. He runs his tongue gently around the crown waiting to be acknowledged and, looking up the length of Harry's body, sees him cover his face with his hand for a moment before his eyes appear over the top of his fingers, glimmering bright with a mixture of amusement and something like mild embarrassment.

"Don't expect me look at you when you're doing this, I'm already about to make my tongue bleed trying not to come."

Merlin rubs his thumb slowly up the underside of Harry's cock, tasting another welling bead of precome on his tongue. "Already?"

"Hush." Harry hides again, one arm flung across his eyes like someone swooning in an old painting. "You'll have to stop, I'm afraid, or I shall never be able to face you again." Then he peeks out from beneath the crook of his elbow, smile hidden but cheek dimple on show, and asks, "Will you show me how?"

"Show you," Merlin repeats stupidly. He takes Harry's hand when he reaches it out, pulling him up to sit there in the middle of the bed half in Merlin's lap, naked and flushed and sweating. His arms slide around Merlin's neck, drawing him close for a kiss, and Merlin can feel him trembling: adrenaline, nerves, both, or something else, he's not entirely sure.

"Please," Harry murmurs in a tickling whisper right against his ear. "Show me what you like. You know I'm a fast learner." He's a fucking tease and he's having far too much fun running with this game, tapping his fingers uncertainly in an awkward little pattern against Merlin's hips and pretending he's working up the nerve to touch him.

When he finally does it's hesitant and slow, a single fingertip dragged slowly from the base of Merlin's cock right up the length of him to rest momentarily there at the tip. Harry's got that familiar ridiculous look of concentration on his face, the same one he wears when he's trying to understand some wild new invention Merlin's explaining: brows drawn close in a little frown and eyes intent, and his mind whirling behind them in a way that's almost visible. When he finally leans down to use his mouth it's clumsy and all at once, trying to take the whole thing and pulling back when he can't, then coughing, frowning, going down again more slowly. He starts to move his tongue cautiously, pretending he's not sure whether he's supposed to be doing that, and circles his first two fingers and thumb around the base, starting to stroke until Merlin's shuddering and arching off the bed and Harry's humming sweet little noises of pleasure around him.

" _Harry_ ," Merlin says again, winding shaking fingers into Harry's awful bird's nest of a hairdo trying to tilt him the way he likes it, slow and shallow, rubbing against the roof of his mouth. If Harry's decided he's going to play this game, he's going to get a worthy opponent in it. He looks up at Merlin, flushed and tousled, mouth fucked wet and red, and dips his head again for another lingering, swirling suck before he grins like he's pleased with himself and replies.

"Yes?"

"Can I show you more?"

" _Yes_ ," Harry says immediately. He crawls up, kneeling either side of Merlin's hips so the wet length of his cock nudges close against the crease of Harry's arse, and dives down to kiss him so furiously hard and for so long that the intimate taste of them both mingles and almost disappears in the heat of breath and spit. "Show me everything," Harry murmurs in the space between kisses, "please, I want it to be you." He's got his hand behind his back, wrapped around Merlin's cock again and slowly stroking. "I don't know what to do, should I be on my front, or...?"

"If you want." He can feel Harry's eyes on him as he's opening the drawer beside the bed, the quiet little hitch in his breathing when Merlin pushes his hand away and taps him gently on the thigh to get him to turn over.

Harry glances back just once, then he pulls a pillow beneath his cheek and settles there, fingers clutching at the cotton, shoulders trembling. Very quietly he says, "I don't want to stop, but does it hurt?" and Merlin can feel the words like a sliding finger down his spine, stroking a wave of goosebumps through him.

"Harry, Jesus."

"Well, does it? One hears horror stories."

"You've been shot," Merlin points out, touching his thumb to the scar on Harry's upper arm, then the one on his calf. "Multiple times."

"Not in the arse, though," Harry reminds him, somehow managing to sound prim even with his backside in the air and a rash of kisses sucked visible into the soft skin of his neck. Merlin fights a smile, a sudden irrepressible burst of fondness for him, and presses gently at the inside of Harry's knee, then the other, until he shifts them a few inches farther apart on the bed.

"You don't have to keep pretending."

Harry just hums something unintelligible, breathing growing shaky as Merlin strokes a wet fingertip down between his cheeks; by the time he's two fingers in, ten minutes later, Harry is almost sobbing in frustration, which frankly serves him right. If he's going to tease about the pretence he can damn well take some teasing in return. "I'll kill you," he's saying, very nearly moaning it. "You know I know how to make it look like an accident."

"Is that so?" Merlin asks mildly, crooking his fingers, and Harry hides his face in the pillow again and chokes on a frustrated cry. When he begs _please_  again it's muffled in cotton and goose-down, sounding slurred with desperation. Reaching over Harry's hip, Merlin finds his cock straining hard and dripping, slicked wet to halfway down his shaft, and has to bite back a hungry, wondering little noise of his own. "My god, you could come just from this, couldn't you?"

"I expect we'll find out within the next ten seconds if you don't—"

He shuts up immediately when Merlin pulls his fingers away, trying to shift back and chase them and only settling when he feels the hand on his hip steadying him and the slow, wet slide of Merlin's cock.

" _Oh_." It's little more than a heavy breath out, another breath sucked back in and held tight as Merlin inches inside him. "Are you wearing...?"

"Of course. Am I hurting you?"

"No," Harry whispers, but he sounds unsure of himself – Harry, who thinks faster than the speed of light on a job, who can kill twelve men with his bare hands then stride back into HQ with not a single hair out of place, who's never in his life sounded unsure about anything. Merlin remembers his own first time, strange and efficient like a science experiment: no ghastly complications like  _feelings_ , simply a sort of rite of passage one night in a prefect's room after lights out that neither of them felt the need to mention again afterwards. It hadn't hurt, but it hadn't been particularly fun either; fun came later, after the peculiarity of school was long in the past. A morbid sort of curiosity about Harry's real first time looms up in his mind, bitter and awful, and all he can do to soothe it is play along, try to make this fictional first time better for both of them than anything they've had before.

He curls his fingers around Harry's shoulder, tugging gently until he's up on his knees, and settles his arms loosely around Harry's waist from behind. "I won't hurt you," he murmurs, lips brushing against the back of Harry's ear. "As slow as you like. I've got you."

But Harry, because he's Harry and impatient and a godawful fucking show off, sinks right down on him in a single smooth movement. For a moment his shoulders tense, and his stomach muscles beneath the stroke of Merlin's fingers, then he's laughing softly, head tipped back against Merlin's shoulder. " _Fuck_."

"Good?"

Harry nods slowly, hair brushing and tickling against Merlin's nose. "Strange."

"But not bad strange?"

Another tickle, almost enough to make him sneeze from the touch and the chemical scent of whatever product is in there as Harry shakes his head. "Full. And..." He trails off, tilting to offer more of his neck when Merlin kisses him there. "Could you move?"

"Go down on the pillow again." Merlin guides him, not quite managing to stay inside him the whole way down but that's alright, it just means he gets the thrill of sliding back inside: a long, slow drive into the heat of him, slicked so wet it's smeared all over Harry's thighs and the bedclothes as well, and on Merlin's hands when they take hold of Harry's hips again to guide him insistently back to meet him. "Tell me," Merlin says, fighting to keep his breath and words steady now it's finally happening after what feels like a million years of yearning he'd kept muted by necessity. "Like this? Or"—he digs his fingertips in and yanks Harry back sharply onto his cock, and the desperate craving in Harry's wordless shout means he doesn't have to bother finishing his question. He does anyway, just needing to  _know_ , needing to hear it. "Like this?" he says again, driving back into him so forcefully that Harry has to brace himself with a hand wrapped right around one of the bars of the bedstead.

" _Yes_ , like that." Every breathy little sound he spills and every desperate squirm makes sweat prickle on the back of Merlin's neck. "Exactly this, don't stop."

Merlin can feel it building in him almost at once, warmth and want spreading through him like ripples. There'll be plenty of time later to keep Harry in his bed all day and fucking take him apart like some intricate machine he's trying to learn the workings of, but right  _now_ —"Will you come?" he says against Harry's ear in a rough, breathless sort of whisper. "Soon?"

" _Yes_ ," Harry says again, scrambling to find Merlin's hand on his hip and draw it farther down. He curls Merlin's fingers tight around his cock but keeps his own hand there as well to show him how to stroke, how hard and how fast, finding a clumsy sort of syncopated rhythm between them until the heat crests like a wave and Merlin presses frantic wet kisses against the bumps at the top of Harry's spine in some wild ineffectual attempt not to cry out loud as he's shuddering and spilling inside him. Harry twists just enough to look at him, eyes wide and wondering, and he comes like that a few moments later with a sob in his shaking breath and his messy fingers still twined with Merlin's around his cock.

There's something awful about cleaning up afterwards, like a premature return to reality before either of them are even close to ready for it. Merlin comes back from the bathroom with a glass of water to share and a towel, dropping the latter on Harry's streaked stomach and turning away to find a couple of pairs of pyjama trousers in his chest of drawers. He throws one of those at Harry as well so he can don his own, but Harry, who could probably grab a shot arrow out of the air if he put his mind to it, doesn't even make an attempt to catch the fabric but lets it land on him, red stripes sprawled all across his bare chest right where Merlin was about to settle himself.

"Are you alright?" Merlin asks, confused, and slightly self-conscious because nobody in the world has ever  _gazed_  at him the way Harry's doing now, with a soft little smile on his mouth and a look of such unabashed contentment in his eyes that Merlin sort of wants to turn the overhead light on and make sure it's not all just wishful thinking.

"Come here," Harry tells him, holding out his hand. Not putting pyjamas on, then. Merlin's not about to complain about that. He steps closer, takes Harry's hand, doesn't even let it go when they're both under the covers trying to find a way to lie that's comfortable for the both of them. He can feel Harry's hair under his chin, the heaviness of his head resting on Merlin's shoulder, deadly clever fingers drawing vague little patterns across his chest. "It wasn't a game, you know," Harry says after a while, long enough that Merlin thought he'd fallen asleep and is halfway there himself.

"What wasn't?"

"Merlin." He sounds exasperated. "You've seen how fussy I am about the brands of my toothpaste and bloody fountain pen ink. Why on earth do you think I'd be any less discerning about letting people sweat all over me? I've simply never felt the need before."

Fighting sleep is a struggle Merlin doesn't have the energy for, but he forces it back just enough to say, disbelieving, "What? Pull the other one, I've seen you after some of your missions."

"I'm sure I would have done more had a mission ever called for it, but there's an awful lot of information one can extract with just kisses and promises." His tone turns sly. "For example, it took me no time at all to discover you're a terrible pervert with a fetish for wide-eyed virgins and you ought to be ashamed of yourself."

Merlin considers it for a moment through the haze of sleep and can't find a single scrap of shame anywhere, though he imagines he might have nosy questions once he's thinking straight again. "If you say so," he manages to get out through a wide yawn. He tucks Harry even closer into his side, stroking slowly up and down his arm with gentle fingertips while the other hand stays entwined with Harry's, resting on his chest. "Straight into the skip with you, I've taken what I needed."

"Not a fucking chance," Harry says softly, pressing a kiss on the ridge of his collarbone, and that's where Merlin falls asleep: Harry curled around him, and the steady sound of his breathing in the darkness of the bedroom.


End file.
